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"That's different."

I almost laughed. Almost. It was hard to hold onto humor with that particular set of words sitting in my chest like a stone.

We found the hidden staircase without having to reveal it this time. It was already open.

Last time, Martha had been drawn to the ancient Dragon painting, and Zelda had needed Magic to reveal the passage hidden behind it. This time the entrance sat there yawning open, stairs descending into darkness, like it had been waiting for her.

"I don't like that," Zelda said flatly.

"Get in line," Martha muttered, and started down.

Barney was practically vibrating at my elbow, journal open, comparing every stone and shadow against something he'd read a hundred times and never fully understood until today. I let him mutter. It kept his hands busy, and a busy Barney was a Barney who didn't have time to spiral.

My own Magic started to feel strange somewhere around the fourth step down. Not gone– not yet– but thin. Stretched. Like a signal losing strength the farther you got from the tower.

Roy went quiet in a way I recognized as not quite right.

That told me explicitly how close we were to whatever field had shut us both down in the swamp.

We reached Margaret's tomb at the bottom, and for a long moment, we all just stood there in the cold and the dark and looked at it.

The inscription across the top still read, plain as anything, LAST TO REFUSE THE CROWN.

Martha stepped closer.

Stone ground against stone, somewhere deep in the wall behind the tomb. Dust sifted down from the ceiling in a fine gray curtain. And the letters themselves began to shift, the middle word cracking and crumbling away right in front of us. Centuries of carved stone rearranging itself like it had simply been waiting for the right woman to walk close enough.

R-E-F fell away.

Then it said: LAST TO USE THE CROWN.

Martha stared at it. "Well, somebody owes history one hell of a correction."

"It was altered," Barney breathed, already flipping pages.

"No," Zelda said quietly. "Hidden."

I felt the difference in that word land in my chest, just as it had clearly landed in Martha's. Altered was an accident, a misunderstanding, centuries of retelling wearing the truth down to something smoother and easier to live with.

Hidden meant somebody had done this on purpose.

Martha reached out and laid her palm flat against the lid of the tomb.

Click.

"Martha."

"I didn't do anything!"

"You touched it," Chewy pointed out, entirely unhelpfully.

"Touching isn't doing."

"That's not what you said when I touched the cake."

The lid ground open before Martha could argue that particular point with the little, lovable furball any further, and every one of us braced for what four months of superstition and swamp monsters had trained us to expect.

Martha muttered, half under her breath, "Maeve is gonna be pissed she missed the dead body."